HI FRIENDS
Back in the summer of 2022, I found myself reading this somewhat intimidating sounding book called Mastery by Robert Greene. I was particularly inspired by the way it talks about vocation, which sparked all sorts of new thoughts and ideas for me.
Now, it has so much to offer us on this topic that it is impossible to summarise here, but I thought I’d have a go at collecting together some thought-provoking quotes into groups that highlight some of its most helpful ideas. But, of course, the best way to get the most out of the book is to read it yourself.
I would highly recommend reading the opening chapter here in order to get a sense of the context for the quotes below. You will get far more out of the book this way.
First, what’s it all about?
The overall structure of the book is Robert taking us on a journey toward mastery. He uses a wide variety of examples throughout history to illuminate the process—from the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci and Napoleon Bonaparte, to Charles Darwin, John Coltrane and dancer Martha Graham. Mastery is described as a power that is available to everyone through a lifelong process which involves broadly three stages:
listening to your unique inclinations,
following them into an education which acts as an apprenticeship, and
activating your own creative contributions to humanity, offered as the culmination of your skills and knowledge.
So, what does Mastery have to teach us about finding and pursuing our calling?
I’ve organised these quotes by grouping them under the key points which most impacted me.
WE EACH HAVE A UNIQUE CALLING IN LIFE WHICH COMES FROM OUR UNIQUENESS
At your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life's Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it—as a force, a voice or in whatever form—the greater your chance of fulfilling this Life's Task and achieving mastery.
Your vocation is more than the work that you do. It is intimately connected to the deepest part of your being and is a manifestation of the intense diversity in nature and within human culture. In this sense, you must see your vocation as eminently poetic and inspiring.
In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.
How can we explain such inclinations? They are forces within us that come from a deeper place than conscious words can express. They draw us to certain experiences and away from others.
Some people never become who they are. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you then you can become what you were fated to become, an individual, a master.
The voice in this case that is calling you is not necessarily coming from God, but from deep within. It emanates from your individuality. It tells you which activities suit your character. And at a certain point, it calls you to a particular form of work or career. Your work then is something connected deeply to who you are, not a separate compartment in your life. You develop then a sense of your vocation.
Your false self is the accumulation of all the voice you have internalized from other people-parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values that can easily seduce you. It also includes the voice of your own ego, which constantly tries to protect you from unflattering truths.
A false path in life is generally something we are attracted to for the wrong reasons—money, fame, attention, and so on. If it is attention we need, we often experience a kind of emptiness inside that we are hoping to fill with the false love of public approval.
Understand, your life’s task does not necessarily appear to you through some grand or promising inclination, it can appear in the guise of your deficiencies.
The word “genius” comes from Latin, and originally referred to a guardian spirit that watched over the birth of each person; it later came to refer to the innate qualities that make each person uniquely gifted.
Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers. Because of these judgments, we might see our strengths as disabilities and try to work around them in order to fit in. But anything that is peculiar to our makeup is precisely what we must pay the deepest attention to and lean on in our rise to mastery.
Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.
Finally, you must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.
WE OWE IT TO OTHERS TO PURSUE THIS CALLING AND NOT BE DISTRACTED FROM IT
It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.
We thrive by the collective activity of people supplying their individual talents. Without such diversity, a culture dies.
Your uniqueness at birth is a marker of this necessary diversity. To the degree that you cultivate and express it you are fulfilling a vital role. Our times might emphasise equality, which we then mistake as the need for everyone to be the same, but what we really mean by this is the equal chance for people to express their differences. To let a thousand flowers bloom.
Too often we make a separation in our lives—there is work and there is life outside work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live.
A natural response when people feel overwhelmed is to retreat into various forms of passivity. If we don’t try too much in life, if we limit our circle of action, we can give ourselves the illusion of control. The less we attempt, the less chances of failure. If we can make it look like we are not really responsible for our fate, for what happens to us in life, then our apparent powerlessness is more palatable.
Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.
The passive ironic attitude is not cool or romantic, but pathetic and destructive.
People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.
What offers immediate pleasure comes to seem like a distraction, an empty entertainment to help pass the time. Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings.
WE NEED TO DEVELOP OUR POWERS OF FOCUS AND ATTENTION AS WE BEGIN TO PURSUE OUR VOCATION
Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.
It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.
You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.
The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.
Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.
It is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.
Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future.
To build anything well—a house, a political organization, a business, or a film—you must understand the building process and possess the necessary skills. You are a craftsman learning to adhere to the highest standards. For all of this, you must go through a careful apprenticeship. You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.
You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.
Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.
If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.
With such a deep rooted interest you can withstand the setbacks and failures, the days of drudgery, and the hard work that are always a part of any creative action. You can ignore the doubters and critics. You will then feel personally committed to solving the problem and will not rest until you do so.
Most people are perpetually locked in the present. Their decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.
In our culture we tend to equate thinking and intellectual powers with success and achievement. In many ways, however, it is an emotional quality that separates those who master a field from the many who simply work at a job. Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.
The only real impediment to this is yourself and your emotions—boredom, panic, frustration, insecurity. You cannot suppress such emotions—they are normal to the process and are experienced by everyone, including Masters. What you can do is have faith in the process.
FURTHER READING
This summary video by Next Level Life does a good job of breaking the book down into two parts, covering lots of what I have left out above. Here is the second video on the topic of apprenticeship which is a key theme in the book.
And there are some more quotes from the book here.
Have you read the book? I’d love to hear what you took away from it.
Godspeed,
T Mo